Chương 194: Lonely Mountain

After the duel with Argandin's champion, the world became a lonelier place. That was both because there were almost no settlements in the higher reaches of the range and because the Ebon Blade dwelled obsessively on the moment. It had a wielder, but in name only now. In reality, it was a soul tethered by vengeance to a corpse whose heart still happened to beat. The blade had no wish to trade Geral for the man they'd just beaten, but his mere existence put things into perspective.

That's really all I need, the blade decided. Opponents of that caliber, and someone full of life to wield me. Such certainties didn't make the road ahead any easier to bear, though. Once they transitioned into the snowy lands at the peak of the world, things became even emptier. The only life it detected was beastmen, and they were almost always smart enough to stay away from Geral and the shambling troop of zombies that came after him.

Those zombies that were in the worst shape froze hard enough that they fell behind and ceased to be. The blade didn't care about that. Of all its powers, this one was the least welcome. While undeath was certainly part of the spectrum of its strange existence, it had a hard time with the idea of turning an honored foe into a walking puppet and a tortured soul.

Rather than wrestle with that thought, or its current path's insistence that it fashion some deathless abomination to advance, the blade reflected quietly on the souls that occupied its ruby soulstone. While its Life Force reserves were entirely full, its soul reserves were half empty. In the center, the Demon Queen's soul dominated everything, but she was hardly alone.

The few remaining demon prince souls that the blade had, as well as the avatar souls it had taken recently, and the dragon souls it had taken from the Mechanical Drake weeks ago. All of them orbited Nuella's soul, but were each distinct thanks to the amount of power they held. Despite the number of human and monster souls it had used so recently, a few of them lingered still, but they were a ghostly background compared to the spectacle of those larger souls.

The souls of Geral's family were still there too, in the darkness, waiting to be reunited with him. It was the largest possible array of power that it could imagine, and it wondered about that at length. What would my soul look like at this point? It reflected. Surely I have the strength of a dragon, but not yet a goddess. It was an interesting question, and there was more than vanity behind it. The weight of its soul was a huge burden on the man who wielded it now.

What would happen if it got even stronger, though? Orcs and other monsters didn't live as long as humans. It might kill a goblin or a beastman wielder in weeks now, and an orcish one in a month or two. Life was transitory, but never more so than when it was involved. Pity I can't make a proper deathless wielder to handle that, it reflected. While the Ebon Blade would always prefer to be in the hands of a human, it would also prefer that they died in battle rather than because of magically induced old age.

While it could do a lot with souls now, thanks to its most recent step on The Path of Undeath, that didn't seem to be an option. It could turn a soul into a purely ethereal construct like a ghost, or it could braid several corpses together to forge something like a wraith or a specter that could actually hurt its enemies. The idea of a scout wasn't the worst idea; a ghost could travel a hundred times its aura of hunger, which was a distance measured in miles, but they also evaporated in sunlight.

The others could endure cloudy days and indirect light, but it had no need for assassins; the sword would do its fighting itself. There were even more powerful choices available to it now, too. It could fuse the souls more directly with a body to create a soul knight or a revenant. It had little to do with actually fighting, though, and it wasn't sure how much further down this path it wanted to go. Perhaps if we are victorious, I will craft a zombie after Geral dies, it reflected.

Just to see what the fifth level of the path contains, and if there is a road beyond it. Truthfully, that held about as much appeal to it as learning a trade like carpentry or pottery, but it was worth knowing what other upgrades existed, since it had no desire to drain the demon souls that were left to it of their remaining powers at the expense of tainting its soul. Stolen novel; please report. It occurred only belatedly to the blade that the idea of what it would do after this was darkly funny.

It was off to fight the lord of the gods. With the possible exception of falling into hell, that was the most dangerous thing it had ever done. There might be no after, after that, it might lose, or even be destroyed at long last. It accepted such an outcome with equanimity. It wanted to win because that was its nature, but if there was no chance of defeat, then it wasn't truly a fight, now was it? The blade continued, lost in the reverie for a long time. It was at least several days.

Still, a line of pure power before them broke its meditation. For just a second, it feared that a god was ambushing them, and had launched their attack when it was off guard. That wasn't the case, though. No fire or thunder hammer them. Instead, a single figure appeared before them. The blade held Geral back as the zombies still trailing them stopped a dozen feet behind him. That wasn't because it didn't want to strike down the divine being in front of it, but because it was cautious. This was not an avatar.

The glowing dwarf that stood before them in the valley, holding its battle axe in hand, was an actual god, or, barring that, a demi-god. It didn't know enough to say if there was a distinction there.

"That's far enough, laddie," the dwarf announced. Despite the power he radiated, visually and etherically, he lacked the prideful mein that the blade would have expected.

"You should know that you're not welcome here. Leave now before I have to do what I should've done a long time ago, and pound you flat on my anvil." The weapon had no idea if that was an empty threat or not. It didn't bother to ask. Instead, it answered, You would not let me leave even if I wanted to.

"That's simply not so," the god answered, despite the fact that the words were silent.

"I've spoken with all the other lords of the heavens, and they've agreed. Walk north without ending, flee the world of men and our respective domains, and we will part as friends and be done with each other for all time." What lies to the north? The sword asked, as it felt its wielder beginning to grow impatient. Geral didn't care if they walked on or started fighting, but he chaffed at standing still.

"The realms stretch forever, in all directions," the dwarf answered solemnly.

"If you go far enough, you might even wander beyond creation itself, but rest assured you shall find challenges underempt of." Undreamed of challenges. That appealed to the weapon. If the dwarf had not used the word flee the blade might have considered it, but even if it could make peace with such a fate, it knew that its wielder could not.

Whether death or madness awaited Geral should he fail to strike down Hydonar, the weapon couldn't say, but he knew that was all its wielder wanted, and it wouldn't deny him that. Still, it considered the offer, strange though it was. Was it better to war with heaven or be free of its gaze? We cannot abandon our quest to slay Hydonar, it answered finally. He has slain my wielder's family, and that cannot be forgiven.

If he will face me in a duel, I will set aside my other quarrels and leave after I've struck him down.

"That will never happen," the dwarf answered with a shake of his head.

"You might sooner snuff out the sun than—" Geral surged forward at that. If there was no easy way out of this, then surprise was an advantage that neither of them would willingly forsake. He brought the black blade down savagely at the dwarf's unarmored head. But the god managed to raise his axe to block the blow with inches so spare. The Ebon Blade tried to use Vorpal Strike at that moment to press through, but even as it did so, it saw another message that it hadn't seen in a long time. -50 Life Force.

You have been disrupted! That angered the sword. It shouldn't have been a surprise that a dwarven god would have such an anti-magic power, but even so, it was irritating. The last time it had been subjected to a nullification power, it had barely relied on its magic powers. That had changed substantially in the intervening years, and even for the half-minute or so that it expected it would take to get that power back, it felt naked.

I can beat you even without my powers, the blade snarled as Geral launched a second attack that was even fiercer than the first one.

"Aye," the dwarf grunted.

"That's likely true. But I came not to fight you, but to bury you." The blade only had a moment to take in those words before the snow all around both of them, and the ground that hid beneath it fell away, into a yawning void of darkness and churning rubble. Even as Geral fell, the dwarven deity looked down on them with something close to pity. The slender cliff he stood on extended most unnaturally over the hole that he'd lured the blade into.

As it's zombies fell down into the dark, the sword looked around in all directions. The chaos didn't prevent it from spotting the closest outcropping. It might even be able to reach the stone and climb free of the trap, it decided. So, it puppetted Geral to leap off a piece of rubble to vault that distance, but the most it could do was land several feet below the surface, embedding itself into a crack. For a moment, that was enough to save it, then that face gave way, sending them both tumbling deep into the earth.